Inside Dunn’s World: Known and Unknown
A continuing series exploring the people who shaped his world — and those shaped by it.

What was it like to live through the collapse of a kingdom — not with spear in hand, but pen in hand?

We do not know if Magema Fuze ever met John Dunn. But he lived in Dunn’s world. He walked the same ground, watched the same kings rise and fall, and wrestled with the same question that haunted all who stood between two cultures: Where do I belong?

Fuze was a Zulu Christian. A writer. A printer. A quiet observer in a loud and broken land. Educated by Bishop Colenso and shaped by both Zulu tradition and Western thought, he became one of the first Zulus to write a book. He wrote not to glorify, but to understand — and in doing so, he captured something few ever did: the soul of a people torn between past and future.

He saw the missionaries. He saw the chiefs. He saw what the British did to Cetshwayo. And he wrote it down.

Fuze never fired a shot, never sat under a fig tree taking petitions — but he lived through the same fire as Dunn, and left behind a different kind of record. One made not of cattle tallies or border reports, but of memory, language and loss.

His voice, too, deserves to be remembered.

📍 Who: Magema Magwaza Fuze

📅 When: 1840s–1922

🔗 Connection to Dunn: A fellow countryman— Christian, Zulu, literate, observer of the same history from another angle.